{"id":9160,"date":"2022-03-24T22:07:48","date_gmt":"2022-03-25T05:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/?p=9160"},"modified":"2025-08-18T13:22:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T20:22:11","slug":"quick-messaging-with-students-in-canvas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/2022\/03\/quick-messaging-with-students-in-canvas\/","title":{"rendered":"Quick messaging with students in Canvas"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted so I remember something, but a faculty member asked how I did this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It looks like it’s just a link in the menu that says “* Message Lisa”, but it’s so much more. You’ll notice to the left, in the system-wide blue menu, is the Inbox. This is what students are told to use to message their instructor. But when you go there, you have to search for the instructor, by course and by name, before you get a window where you can type your message. That’s stupid. It should be easy to contact your instructor.<\/p>\n

But my “* Message Lisa” link doesn’t just go to the Inbox. It opens a window immediately where they can type their message, with all the fields (their course, their name) filled in already. No searching required.<\/p>\n

For that link, it’s tricky. Each course in Canvas has its own link to the instructor’s inbox. The format is this:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/YOURCANVASINSTALLATION.com\/conversations?context_id=course_COURSEID&user_id=USERID&user_name=CANVASNAME<\/span><\/p>\n

So for me in course #29474 that’s:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/miracosta.instructure.com\/conversations?context_id=course_29474&user_id=83&user_name=Lisa%20M%20Lane<\/span><\/p>\n

To find the course number, you can go to any assignment inside your class and look at the URL, or you can mouse over the class tile in the Dashboard. To find your user number, mouse over anywhere your name is linked in the class (like at the top of an Announcement). To find your user name, see your Profile.<\/p>\n

Then I use the Redirect App in the Settings – Apps<\/a>, and create it as a link, just changing the course number for each course. It rolls over each term, so I just have to change the course number each time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted so I remember something, but a faculty member asked how I did this: It looks like it’s just a link in the menu that says “* Message Lisa”, but it’s so much more. You’ll notice to the left, in the system-wide blue menu, is the Inbox. This is what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[32,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cmslms","category-online-teaching"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9160"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9169,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9160\/revisions\/9169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}